


Extolled Above Women Be Yael

by Kastaka



Category: Bible - Hebrew Bible or Old Testament
Genre: Yuletide, challenge:NYR 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-01
Updated: 2008-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-14 23:33:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/pseuds/Kastaka





	Extolled Above Women Be Yael

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Roga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roga/gifts).



 

 

_Extolled above women be Yael,_

She had scarcely a moment to reflect, afterwards. Of course she enjoyed the praise and the attention. What else should she do? She had done the right thing, by her country and by her people, of that there was no doubt. The battle had gone to the Israelites. Everyone wanted to speak to her, to congratulate her, just to be in her presence and hope that some of the glory reflected onto them. If that had been all, she thought between smiling, demurring modestly that it was nothing, something that anyone would have done in her place - if that had been all, she might have been as happy as the crowds who wished to thank her. But there was something of an edge to the proceedings - a look in the eyes of those she saw every day. Those who had known her before. Especially the women. None of them would say, of course. They were as complimentary and awed in public as any of her admirers. But they had known her as a person, not a symbol, and she could see that in their hearts they wondered, those who had not been to war - what does it take to kill a man? To take everyday tools and extinguish the life from a fellow human being? Even those who had been warriors - it was one thing to kill some enemy who was charging towards you with the same intent in their mind, and quite another to do as she had done.

* * *

_The wife of Heber the Kenite,_

At first she had thought him jealous, that she had become famed and he remained humble. That she was visited by men, just to see her or applaud her. Perhaps, she thought, he was concerned about the possibility of her being seduced away, that one of the important and powerful men that wanted to make her acquaintance would take her from him. But as the days continued and the nights wore on, he continued to be distant. They had no togetherness until she begged him for it, and even then he was barely present in the moment, going through the motions in a disconnected fashion which left her unsatisfied in the heart. It was then that she understood. It was not jealousy, or worry, which had driven him to act thus. It was fear.

If she could do this thing, what else might she be capable of?

* * *

_Extolled above women in the tent._

The women no longer treated her in the same way as they had before. Even accounting for the visitors and the trials surrounding her new status as a public figure, there was a silence that descended whenever she was near. It was the same silence that she recognised from those times when a man had entered the domain of women - the same silence that she recalled imposing on even the most well-meaning male intruders into her domestic affairs. There was no overt action, of course, no slight that she could identify and point to. Yet there was this feeling, this impression, this message that she was no longer what she had once been. She was no longer one of the women of the tent, to be included in the whispers and camaraderie that always prevailed in such places. She had been exalted above that position, and in that exultation was forever excluded from the sisterhood of those who were not so blessed.

Why did this blessing become a curse?

* * *

_He asked for water, she gave him milk;_

She remembered the man clearly. How could she not? Every line on his face, his warm brown eyes, the pleading look that he had come to her with. His clothing was torn and bloodied, fresh from the battlefield, and the ingrained dirt spoke of long days on campaign and longer ones on the road, fleeing his army. She was not sure how she recognised him, even to this day, as the commander of the opposing army. He had certainly not presented himself as such when he had stopped at her camp, a traveller on the dusty road, desperate for water. She supposed it must have been G-d speaking into her heart, the way that the prophets heard Him, although she had not been granted such certainties before or since. Her motives were not clear even to herself. She had thought of crying out, certainly, of raising the alarm, but something had kept her calm, sent her back into her tent for the curdled milk. The traveller was obviously hungry, as well as thirsty. It could have been compassion.

It could have been compassion, except for what followed.

* * *

_She brought him cream in a lordly dish._

They still had the dish. It sat nestled amongst the crockery, a silent accusation amongst the common plates and dishes. There had been offers to buy it, of course. There was much demand in those days for amulets and trinkets, items of power, focuses of superstition. She would not sell it to such people. The events which had transformed her life were sent from the Lord, and she would not profane their memory by letting the dish be used thus. It was a symbol of deception, not a thing to be revered. She knew she should hold no remorse for what she had done, for it was divinely ordained.

But there was no hiding the stain of blood, however justly spilled.

* * *

_She stretched forth her hand to the nail,_

He had asked her to lie for him. She clung to that fact sometimes. The man she had killed was not blameless. Of course, she knew of all the other things that the men said he had done, and that he had led an army against her kinfolk, but these concepts were distant, unrelated to her everyday life. Her deception felt a little cleaner, knowing that he had asked her to deceive on his behalf. "If someone comes by," he had said, "tell them no-one's here." She made for him a place to sleep. He was worn out from the travelling. The most absurd things occur to you in those moments. She dithered over the blankets. After the dish of milk, and having shown him that she knew who he was, and treating him like an important personage with whom their family had an important alliance, she should provide the best of their blankets. But she knew that things were going to get messy, and the blankets would never be usable again.

She brought him the scratchy blanket that she had always disliked. It didn't look too cheap. It had a good pattern embroidered into it.

* * *

_Her right hand to the workman's hammer,_

Yael was no stranger to tools. They lived in tents. They kept no servants. She was a practical kind of woman. Sometimes the pegs of the tent would come loose in the howling winds that swept past some of their resting-places. Sometimes the old ones would be worn beyond use. She knew where the hammer and the spare pegs were kept. It was with a sense of dreamlike inevitability that she went and fetched them. She wasted time, fussing over the pegs. Was this one sharp enough? Would this one hold together? She knew so little of the properties of the human skull. Somehow it had never seemed important before. She knew that it did not matter. It made no difference. What was to happen would happen. But her hands rebelled against the notion, and spent the time sorting through the pegs. If she was going to do it, then it would be done right.

* * *

_And she smote Sisera; she crushed his head,_

She allowed herself no fear or doubt as she crossed the room quietly, the sound of her breathing absurdly loud in her ears. Nothing in her life had felt as right as this moment. Perhaps nothing would again. The world slowed as she approached her target, seeing the moment to come with crystalline clarity, already planning the position of the peg, the trajectory of the hammer. There was no choice. There was no option. She knew that she would act, and she would obey, and her trust would be rewarded with success, at the very least. She would please her Lord and serve her country.

Gently, she placed the peg. Effortlessly, she swung the hammer.

* * *

_She crashed through and transfixed his temples._

She had not fully comprehended the horror until that moment, the horror of what she was about to do. The sight of the brain through the ruins of his skull, the red blood welling up around the white center, the terrible thing which should not be, laid out before her. She had dropped the hammer where it had landed, numbly, from a hand that suddenly lacked the strength that it had so obviously displayed just a second before. She had tended to wounds before. She was no stranger to blood, to broken skin, even to the breaking of bones. But there was nothing to prepare her for this. Her patients had been alive, awake, wincing a little at her ministrations. This, she had not seen before.

* * *

_At her feet he curled himself, he fell, he lay still;_

It was not the lack of movement that so affected her, for when he had been sleeping he had been still. If he had remained so, she could have convinced the terrified animal part of her - the part that recoiled and shrank away from the deed she had committed with such a firm resolve - that he was still in that harmless state of repose. She could have looked away from the ruin of his head to the untouched lines under the blanket, and forgotten for one blissful moment, long enough to gather her wits. But he did not remain still. Like a stricken insect, he twitched as he died, curling in unconscious protection of the head which he had already lost the battle to protect. It was the movement that affected her more than anything else. A reminder that what was now dead had once been alive, breathing the same air as her, sharing in the hospitality of her tent.

* * *

_At her feet he curled himself, he fell;_

Finally she gathered her wits together. There was nothing to be done. Life had to continue. She wondered who she should inform of the events which had transpired. The politics of the situation were beyond her, and she struggled to grasp at that clarity of purpose she had experienced just before she had killed him. Mindlessly, she tidied, putting things away, clearing things up, trying not to look at the dead man on her floor. What would she say if someone came by? Would they recognise the man as she had? The moment of clarity had contained nothing to indicate what should happen next. Now she had to deal with the consequences.

Of course, she was not so alone as she felt in those moments. None of the dire scenarios that she had played out in her head came to pass. Barak rode by, the one who had commanded armies against the man she now held in her tent, on the trail of the man she had killed, and it was simple to report her victory to him, confident of her reception.

* * *

_And where he curled himself, let it be, there he fell dead._

Sometimes she wondered if her life would ever return to normal. She knew that she was fortunate. She knew that she should be grateful for the opportunity she had been granted. But Sisera had been alive, and then he had been dead, and nobody would look at her in the same way again. 

 


End file.
